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“I could be down for that,” she murmurs low in her throat, and I know without a doubt we won’t get much relaxing done. “You should get some rest.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow. How early is too early since you’ve got hours ahead of you working?”
“It’s never too early. Call when you want.”
I smile, thinking of an early-morning wake-up call, knowing she’ll be sleepy and discombobulated. I can wish her a good morning and let her fall back into slumber, and she can wake up later, wondering if it was a dream.
“Good night, Stevie.”
“Sleep well, Hendrix.”
CHAPTER 9
Stevie
My doorbell chimes, and I lift my gaze. Through the door’s three rectangular, diagonal glass insets, I see my mom on my front porch.
Frowning, I save my month-end bank reconciliations and set my laptop aside. Pushing up off the couch, I cross the living room and swing the door open. “Mom… what are you doing here?”
“I had to come talk to you,” she says, brushing by me.
I sigh with a bit of frustration. She texted this morning, wanting to get together for lunch, but I have too much to do. I’m heading in to work early tonight to train a new bartender.
“I’m really busy,” I say, a reminder that I don’t have a lot of time, but also a slight brush-off because I’m not sure I want to hear what she has to say. She’s been barraging me with texts every day about her “situation,” and it’s stressing me out because I don’t have answers for her.
“I won’t stay long,” she says as she shrugs her purse off her shoulder and removes her coat.
I move back to the couch and motion for my mom to take a seat. She does, looking around my house with interest. She’s only been here a few times since we’ve “reconnected.” Her eyes land on the coffee table, locking onto my leather-bound diary. It’s open but facedown as I’d been doing some journaling this morning while I sipped my coffee. That was not long after Hendrix called, pulling me out of a deep sleep. It was such a sweet conversation, although very short. Just wishing me a good day, but rather than falling back asleep, I got up and wrote about him.
I’ve kept a diary since I was ten years old. It was a way for me to purge all my bad feelings at first, particularly about the woman sitting next to me. Over the years, it became a way to memorialize events, random thoughts, dreams, and goals.
This morning it was about the new man in my life.
My mom reaches out for it. “What’s this?”
I lunge and snatch it up. “It’s my private journal.”
“Oh,” she murmurs as I close it, securing it with the leather string. If she ever saw my older diaries and the entries I wrote about her when I was ten, she’d be horrified by the feelings I put to paper.
I lean to my left and place the journal on my side table.
“So, what’s up?” I ask, and then silently pray she has somehow miraculously found her way out of trouble and that’s why she’s here—to report the good news.
“I wanted to let you know Randy has bought us some time.”
“What does that mean?”
“He gave them some bullshit story that we had to slow down the time frame between purchases and returns and had to extend our territory to decrease suspicion. They weren’t happy about it at all, but they did give Randy more bills to clean, so I guess they trust what he’s saying.”
I don’t really know what that means, and I don’t want to. “That’s good, right?”
“No,” she snaps in exasperation. “I feel like someone’s going to jump out at any moment to hurt me. It’s an awful feeling not knowing when they’re going to demand their money. But Randy said we have thirty days, so I’m just going to have to trust that.”
I don’t like Randy. The one time I met him he seemed like a weasel, and now he’s got my mom messed up in this shit.
“I think we’re safe, though. They’ve given us more dirty money to put in circulation, so that means they still trust us, right?”
“Mom,” I say, reaching out to grab her hand. “You cannot continue to do this. If you get caught, you’re going to prison.”
“It’s fine,” she assures me, giving my hand a squeeze. “I’m just returning stuff Randy buys. I’ll play dumb if he gets caught and he’ll cover for me.”
“He’ll let you burn,” I say as I pull my hand away, rubbing at the back of my neck.
“Well, that’s moot if we don’t come up with the original money we lost, isn’t it?” She pauses and sucks in a wet sniffle. Her shaking hand flutters at her neck. “When Randy went to tell them we’d be late with the money, they hurt him.”
